Deborah Cameron has a post on how the news media talk about rape, with Harvey Weinstein and the Cyprus case as examples.

The BBC captioned a program on the latter in a…”problematic” way.

In a clip from the interview which was tweeted out from the programme’s account, you can see a ribbon at the bottom of the screen reporting on a rally which had been organised to support the woman and protest her treatment by the authorities. The caption reads: ‘Rally in support of woman in Cyprus “rape” case’.

I almost did a post on that caption last week, but then decided you could see the scare quotes in more than one way and I didn’t feel like … Read the rest

Mary Beard takes a look at the whole “blame the woman” phenomenon in connection with the bizarre way the UK gutter press has “reported” on Meghan Markle. (Buzzfeed has a piece that places stories on The Other One next to stories on MM and the contrast is quite startling. I don’t know for sure of course whether the examples are representative, but it seems likely that they are since otherwise Buzzfeed would get swiftly eviscerated. The creepiest one I saw before I stopped reading was “aw how sweet the way Kate cradles her bump” compared to ” ew look at Meghan virtue-signaling with all this touching her bump.”)

I wrongly thought that the Harry and Meghan story would be a

… Read the rest

Oops we seem to be boiling the oceans.

The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet.

The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.

Boiling the oceans seems like something we don’t want to do, as well as a sign that we’re doing other things we don’t want to do (like frying the lands).

Hotter oceans lead to more severe storms and disrupt the water cycle, meaning more floods, droughts and wildfires, as well as an inexorable rise

… Read the rest

It’s just right below the surface. Sometimes a mere scratch will reveal it.

https://twitter.com/Fisher_Download/status/1215688801680601090 https://twitter.com/MagetasticV/status/1216475157578911744

It takes my breath away.

A woman gestated twin babies for a gay couple, and Pink News calls the babies “their” (meaning the two men’s) daughters. A woman goes through all the exhaustion and discomfort of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, and Pink News refers to her daughters as belonging to two men who have done no work so far apart from one ejaculation.

And then some bystander guy says “they aren’t her kids” and “she was literally just a vessel.”

A vessel is something like a pot or vase or urn, an inanimate object that can contain liquids. A vessel has no mind, … Read the rest

Good to know.

There is no "reproductive system" common to females. We each have our own. Not all of them look or work the same, or for the same purposes.

— Long Covid Killed Fiqah (@DestinySugarB) January 9, 2020

Each one is a mystery. Some are like coconuts, some are like locomotives, some are like Kansas City, some are like law school, some are like November…it’s all totally various and random and ??????… Read the rest

Human Rights Watch tells us the Trumpers are messing with human rights.

The United States State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights risks calling for a dangerous downgrading of international human rights protections. On January 10, 2020, the Human Rights Watch executive director, Kenneth Roth, testified at the commission’s fourth open session.

While the fundamental rights set out in the human rights treaties are clear, the Trump administration has taken issue with the rights they uphold, such as reproductive freedom or the rights of LGBT people not to face discrimination. Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the commission’s exercise in identifying “unalienable” rights is the administration’s unilateral attempt to rewrite international law based on its own beliefs.

That certainly … Read the rest

Cis privilege strikes again.

Samira Ahmed has won her equal pay claim against the BBC in a landmark case that lawyers say could leave the broadcaster facing a bill running into the millions for similar claims by other female staff.

Ahmed, the presenter of viewer feedback programme Newswatch, claimed she was owed almost £700,000 in back pay because of the difference between her £440-an-episode rate and the £3,000 an episode Jeremy Vine received for hosting the similar Points of View programme.

Ooof, that’s quite a gap.

An employment tribunal unanimously concluded that the BBC had failed to provide convincing evidence that the pay gap was for reasons other than gender discrimination, although the BBC continues to dispute this.

No, … Read the rest

About those lavish and unusual apologies…

https://twitter.com/moviefeminist/status/1215736843423055873

McLaughlin is the founder of MeTooSTEM.

Yes, grovel and debase yourself some more. Well done you.

— Jurassic Snark (@underhandrea) January 10, 2020

More apologies. It’s a retort as opposed to a serious statement, but still. More apologies? After that stream of abject prostrate lachrymose apologies they’d already issued?

https://twitter.com/McLNeuro/status/1215748705338515461

Flippant dismissal of the concerns of women, from the woman who founded MeTooSTEM. What did they do to her?

https://twitter.com/McLNeuro/status/1215749880783785984

They get “folks” asking if a group that opposes sexual harassment of women in STEM can change the subject and be about trans people instead – and the founder of the group thinks this is a good thing.

People have lost their damn … Read the rest

The @MeTooSTEM grovel got even more grovelly.

https://twitter.com/MeTooSTEM/status/1215786039232602113

When has anyone ever talked to actual women like that? When has anyone ever apologized to women for sexist insults or misogynist epithets like that? When has anyone ever repudiated something a volunteer retweeted in such abject and sympathy-oozing terms?

Never that I know of. I haven’t seen all the content that exists, of course, but I have paid a lot of attention to how people talk to and about women on social media and this kind of belly-crawling and sobbing with pity on behalf of women is starkly unfamiliar to me. “We are so sorry for the hurtful content” – nope, that’s not how that goes when it’s mere women at … Read the rest

13 former White House press secretaries and foreign service/military officials call for the return of regular White House and other press briefings. 

All of us have experienced the challenges of a regular press briefing whether at the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon. We all had days where the last place we wanted to be was behind one of those podiums. But day after day, we persisted.

We believed that regular briefings were good for the American people, important for the administrations we served, and critical for the governing of our great country.

It’s not that great. It’s really not. It’s behind all other developed democracies on a whole list of items, like maternal mortality for instance. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Would she be able to think critically?

If you heard a two-year-old meow like a cat (they do that, and make other animal noises; it’s fun) and told her or him that the reason s/he liked particular toys, games and clothes was because s/he was really a cat, and that there are lovely doctors who can give her/him fur and a tail when s/he’s old enough, by the time s/he were four they’d be desperate to be turned into a cat. That is what ‘affirmation’ does.

The correct response to a small girl saying “I’m really a boy” is “Wow, really? Well, I’m really an elephant! Shall we go shopping for bananas?”

Of course, … Read the rest

A British Columbia doula asks some questions:

Where do you see yourself in the hierarchy of birth? Are you at the bottom? The smallest player with the smallest voice? Or are you at the top?

Basically the doctor isn’t the boss of you. But what’s intriguing to me is the graphic that illustrates the hierarchy-dismantling.

Isn’t it fascinating that whoever created this graphic sees nurses and midwives as women and doctors as men, but the pregnant woman as the “birthing person”?

You’d think it would at least be consistent – nurse person, doctor person, birthing person, but no, the medical personnel are divided on the strictest of (outdated) lines. Somehow it’s only the one pushing out the baby who … Read the rest

Hmmm.

Trump adds a new vivid description to his attacks on "little pencil neck" Rep. Adam Schiff: "He buys the smallest shirt collar you can get, and it’s loose!"

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) January 10, 2020

Trump’s campaign has been selling Schiff T shirts since last spring. For real.

Trump’s presidential campaign has started selling $28 “Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff” T-shirts that feature a drawing of Rep. Adam Schiff with a pencil for a neck and a clown nose.

Little Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff

He spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking. He should be forced to resign from Congress!

Everyone should buy a Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff shirt today!

BUY Now: https://t.co/5SMsrJC8nU pic.twitter.com/v3Vvmma0e6

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022)

… Read the rest

Meanwhile, during breaks from trying to start a war with Iran, Trump is trashing more environmental regulations.

The Trump administration plans to rewrite decades-old regulations to make it easier to build major infrastructure such as pipelines, which would have the effect of relaxing government efforts to fight the climate crisis.

“Relaxing.” That’s a nice word – a nice, soothing, pleasant word. The truth would be less pleasant: which would have the effect of weakening government efforts to fight the climate crisis. Or harming, ending, negating, nullifying, destroying. Relaxation really has nothing to do with it.

Trump announced Thursday morning the changes to National Environmental Policy Act rules, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of

… Read the rest

A heart-rending and infuriating but perhaps ultimately hopeful thread:

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209411070742529 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209414480683009 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209416112271361 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209418997956608

Oh god. Four years old. It’s unconscionable.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209420717641733

I think we can feel Carol’s fury with her – I think the typos are a kind of fury thermometer. I’m pretty sure I start missing keys when I get wrathful.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209422474993664

Great, the therapist thinks telling a girl that girls can have short hair and wear jeans is confusing while telling her she’s a boy is not confusing. I think we need a new Theory of Confusion.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209424228192258 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209426019209218 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209427734691841

Thinking critically is a good thing, including for therapists. Affirmation and Validation are not always the best thing for people.… Read the rest